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June 23rd

I was going to write about all the seed growing projects that are going on, but instead I’m just going to show a few pictures.

If you live in Minneapolis, you don’t need me to tell you about the weather. We were in town today and there are so many trees down. A lot of Lyndale between Franklin and Lake have been without power since Friday night.

This morning we got about 4” of rain in about an hour and a half. That would be a something more than a once in 200 year rain event. Since Friday morning we have had about 7.35 inches of rain (a 1 in 100 year rain event). It was also very windy last night, but the Buffalo airport only reported gusts of 28 MPH.

The water in this field was up to the edge of the road, about 2 feet deep. The water was over the road in a couple places between here and Hwy 12.

Looking at it from the other side. This ia an oat and pea green manure field. If the wter goes down in a day or two, most of it will be okay. If the water stays up longer than that, a lot of the plants will drown.

This is the most water I have ever seen in this field. The fence is what we are using to keep the DNR’s deer from eating our lettuce. There are two deer that are eating the lettuce. The DNR’s solution was to put up a $12,000, 10 foot woven wire fence around the entire farm. The fence would have run right along the road and we would have a gate for our driveway that we would have to keep closed. Very nice. It makes no sense to me why two deer are worth that much.

This is fairly near the top of a green manure field that was just planted to sorghum sudan grass. The sudax was just coming up and it helped keep the soil from washing. The smooth areas are where the sudax got buried by the sediment that it trapped.

Soil that washed out of a potato bed. You can see where the winter rye has been pushed down and buried by the moving soil. The water kept going.

Some of the soil that washed out of the tomatoes. The blue hose is 2 inches in diameter. Some of the water that moved this dirt came from the potato beds. Some came from the area next to the big puddle in the first two pictures.

More of the soil that washed out of the tomatoes. About 12 billion gallons of water came through this area. It was much more than the french drain could handle and ran over the surface.

Looking at the tomatoes where part of the water came through. You can see that much of the row in the center is missing and part of the one to the right is buried. There is another area where the water ran between two rows and scoured the soil down to the sorghum sudan grass that we had so much trouble plowing under.

This is where the trampoline that Mary bought for the grandkids used to sit. I had to ask if she had taken it down when I came back with the paper.

This is where it landed in our neighbor’s watermelon field, about 500 feet from where it started. It is the black smudge on the other side of the water. We are still missing one of the legs and about half of the springs. Most of what we found seems relatively undamaged.

This is the tree that the trampoline couldn’t quite clear. There is a broken branch in the top knot of branches and another broken branch just above the power line. I have no idea how the trampoline missed the power line.